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When it comes to people’s perceptions of Carl DeMaio, there’s not a lot of middle ground. And that’s as good a reason as any why Rep. Bob Filner will be sworn in next month as San Diego’s 35th mayor and DeMaio won’t.

DeMaio ran to the right in the June primary election, then motored to the middle a la Mitt Romney in the late summer and fall, and too many voters viewed the movement with skepticism instead of support. In the end, DeMaio was too polarizing.

Election 2012

His defeat means that DeMaio will leave behind a divisive legacy when he packs up his office at City Hall next month, like Donna Frye and Michael Aguirre and any number of San Diego politicians with passionate fans and foes.

But unlike Frye, Aguirre and other longtime San Diegans, DeMaio, who swooped into town from Washington, D.C., a decade ago, is already fielding questions about whether he’ll move to another of America’s finest cities.

Questions like mine.

“Carl, there’s been some speculation that you may ... move out of town,” I asked after his concession speech Wednesday. “Do you want to address that?”

That line — Google it, if you haven’t been paying attention — showed me two things: a passion about San Diego and a sense of humor. The quip drew laughter from both the media throng in front of DeMaio, 38, and from a dozen supporters alongside him, including several who had been crying.

One of the most tearful was Jennifer Jacobs, a consultant who has worked with DeMaio for a decade and believes he has “a ton of opportunities” — from pension punditry to the private sector where he made millions, mostly from government contracts with businesses he built from scratch.

Wet eyes like hers were as good a reason as any why DeMaio almost won. He fosters loyalty — to a point.

“Carl’s not just a boss. He’s a very close friend,” said Jeff Powell, DeMaio’s communications director. “When he’s hurting, we’re all hurting.”

Yet who among the San Diego electorate knew DeMaio as a man of emotions, as a man capable of being hurt? To most of us, he was a man with a double-barreled mission — reforming pensions, stabilizing city finances — and a message: safeguard taxpayers at the unions’ expense.

He was a politician who didn’t know that sometimes the best way to safeguard something is to let your guard down in public.

Forget the Romney comparisons. In the past two days, DeMaio reminded me of Bob Dole, another Republican challenger who failed to defeat a sitting president. Dole was so robotic during the campaign and so legitimately funny — so human — on late-night TV shows afterward.